This won’t be easy, however. Everyone is unique and everyone enjoys a unique emotional life. After all, how many times have you shrugged your shoulders or scratched you head, wondering why another person feels the way they do? We can often appear as mysteries to each other. Not as a function of our rationality, reason or intelligence, but because our emotional landscapes are so diverse. And yet, for that diversity, I believe there are some common themes and traits.
I will try and list and describe what I consider to be half a dozen powerful emotional ‘drivers’ that I believe are at work in the minds of religious people. I contend that these irrational drivers can sway otherwise highly intelligent people into accepting and believing things that their rational minds would never accept.
It will take a bit of time to put this all together and I will make a start tonight. Since I’m describing six things it’s possible that I’ll finish some of them and post them. So please maintain a holding pattern.
Many religious people recoil in anxiety and confusion from what science tells them about the cosmos and about evolution. They dislike the indeterminacy and randomness of quantum mechanics. They are dismayed by the lack of plan or purpose in evolution. They are appalled by the idea of a vast and indifferent universe that has no creator, no design and no purpose. In which the Earth is just a speck of dust floating in a black void. This deep fear often leads to the outright denial of scientific evidence. Or if a person has been raised in the YEC tradition, their denial is such an ingrained reaction that they probably don’t even realise what they are doing. Religious belief is their norm and any science that contradicts it is met with a strongly discordant and negative emotional reaction.
Recently the Christian apologist JustCurious clearly displayed these signs of extreme emotional discomfort and unease. When I presented him with the famous Pale Blue Dot image taken by Voyager I asked him to tell me what he saw there with his eyes and not with his faith.
He replied with a statement of faith. So, I pressed him on the matter, telling him that the terms and conditions of my question excluded him from using his faith. Eventually he did concede that the image showed a tiny planet alone in the darkness. But it took a lot of persuasion to get him to answer the question honestly. I’m certain that his emotions were driving him to deny the reality of the image.
But religion gives people like him the antidote to all such anxieties. Christianity places them squarely at the centre of the universe and tells them that they are the cause of its existence. Religion gives them meaning, purpose, order and belonging. It comforts them on many emotional levels and offers them a simple and reassuring way to make sense of an apparently meaningless, chaotic and threatening reality.
So, I submit that here is a case of a powerful emotional driver swaying the rational thinking processes of an otherwise intelligent person. Which is the very point I’ve been discussing with Sheldon in this thread.
THE EMOTIONAL DRIVER OF THE NEED TO SEE LOVED ONES AGAIN
This one needs little explanation.
Atheism, agnosticism and scepticism offer no comfort to those who are unfortunate enough to lose a family member in tragic circumstances. Science offers no hope either.
But religion is all about hope. How much more so if the bereaved firmly believe that they will see spouses, children and relations again? No more pain or suffering. Every tear wiped away and forgotten. Death defeated. Love and life and happiness forever after.
Everyone experiences the pain of separation when a loved one dies. Highly intelligent people are not immune to this pain. Therefore I submit that their overwhelming desire to see their loved ones again can easily sway their rational thinking processes, causing them to believe in and accept things that their intellectual minds would reject on the basis of a lack of evidence.
Some people are anxious enough that they’re seeking relief from their anxieties. Anxiety makes the more vulnerable. But others just see meaning / purpose / alleged knowledge of how things work behind the scenes of reality, as a sort of frosting on the cake. Also if you’re taught from the cradle that without God you would be a lost shade wandering the world, bereft of all hope, then even absent personal anxiety of that kind, you assume you feel centered because you never were “without god”.
Meanwhile at least in the fundagelical world, almost all the salvation testimonies are of the general form, “I was [insert real or imagined (but definitely blown out of proportion) personal peccadillo here] and it was ruining my life and my relationships; then I found Jesus and I was miraculously transformed and set free.” These are people who inherently feel incomplete without Someone (or someone claiming to speak for Someone). They use words like “lost” or “unhappy” or “miserable” but really they are looking for something similar to what some young folks look for in a mate – that missing puzzle piece they’re convinced they need and without which personal happiness or any other form of self-actualization is never going to happen.
In reality, the problem is just that they are human and looking for some decisive and permanent way to transcend the human condition. This is what religion sells. And it only has to work well enough and long enough to ensnare you in a sort of sunk cost fallacy where you now can’t admit to yourself or others that you’ve invested a huge chunk of your life – potentially decades – into what amounts to holy horseshit.
In a sense this is true, but I think what is needed when dealing with grief and loss is not pious platitudes but a mature understanding of reality and a willingness to embrace it as it is rather than as you wish it were.
Martin Short said something recently after the death of his daughter by suicide (which followed the death of his wife from cancer, his parents dying in separate incidents in his late teens, etc). “Sorrow either destroys you or allows you to develop a survival muscle. My daughter struggled heroically against her depression, until she no longer could. Things don’t always go the way you want them to.” Or words to that effect. This didn’t make the loss easier for him, but it did allow him to frame it as something other than this unthinkable thing that was happening to him for an alleged “reason” or because God hated him or he had sinned or whatever. Sometimes there’s great comfort in not making more of a thing than it already is.
What the grieving need is that “survival muscle”, not religious or other crutches.
Maybe the religion is a survival muscle for some, a social bond for others. There likely is more than one reason religions thrive, but it’s not because the beliefs are based on compelling evidence or sound reason.
Time to revisit the OP, the opening sentence is very telling. I’ve numbered two distinct claims there. The first is obviously fine if we are not going to rely on a hasty generalisation fallacy and create a rule, since we don’t know what percentage of total knowledge, what we understand constitutes, it is obviously flawed to create a rule from too small a sample group. Worse still for the author is he is about to posit something that has not been evidenced in anything we understand, ever, so the bias is too obvious to ignore.
The second doesn’t really tell us much still could have and could not have are semantically the same, I shan’t torture the double negative, only add that we don’t know this is true for everything.
Oh really, and when did the thread author understand everything in the universe? Will he / she be publishing soon? The word entirely is so hubristic that I couldn’t resist, I shall just add that even if his hubris was justified, projecting what we know about the universe we currently observe outside of it, again speaks for itself, and if the being is in the universe it must be contingent according to his opening sentence.
Question begging, he simply assumes there is an overarching reason. Occam’s razor is going to need sharpening soon, if it keeps getting used like this.
That sentence seems to be missing a tadah! However lets set aside the levity and compare two claims here:
The universe itself consists entirely of contingent beings.
there must exist a being whose existence depends on nothing else.
Hmm, anyone else getting that metallic taste in their mouth, when they read an argument that strong arms unicorns into existence? Why unicorns, because if we arbitrarily define unicorns in the way he is about to define a deity the argument loses nothing I can see, but please do let me know if anyone thinks he has anything more than a bare appeal to numbers?
I think imaginary would be far more accurate at this point.
I don’t understand didn’t he / she just say the universe consisted entirely of contingent beings? Can he she see outside of the universe then, as well as understanding its etirety? Occam’s razor is almost entirely blunt. Note the correct use of the word entirely, for some context.
I feel a tadah is missing again, how did we get from all his her previously unevidenced assumptions, to this last one? Oh fuck it, now I will have to re-read all his posts, serves me right.
I always say that the religious abstraction works, until it doesn’t. And as for the social bond – that can provide just what some people need, too. One sees that more strongly where there’s a strong subculture, such as with consistently observant Catholics and Jews. Some people have more of an innate need for structure, and religious ritual provides that in spades. If you are extroverted and social enough, this can go a long way towards providing meaning and comfort / refuge / distraction from the vicissitudes of life. It is even possible to benefit from these influences and supports while still understanding and accepting on some level that its basis is ultimately BS.
I guess we all end up doing whatever we have to do to get through our life challenges. The problem is when we lose sight of that and tell ourselves that our tribal affiliations and supports are superior, good and right, making others inferior, bad and wrong, making it a source of exclusion and disrespect that others don’t agree with our particular formulations of choice. Then we start to imagine that we haven’t simply chosen a preference, we have seen the light.
THE EMOTIONAL DRIVER OF THE NEED FOR BELONGING AND COMMUNITY
Humans are social animals and readily form themselves into groups to further social bonding. But I would submit that religion strongly satisfies our emotional need for belonging and community in ways that membership of a secular organisation cannot. No member of a secular sports club or a youth association expects to see its members after they die. But this hope is the foundation of Christian belief – that this is not the true life and the real life awaits all who truly believe. As such, there is an overlap here with the previous emotional driver I described yesterday – the need to see lost loved ones again. For a religious person their loved ones are only temporarily lost and the expectation of seeing them again is perhaps one of the strongest emotional drivers of all.
Churches and their congregations come together to share in rituals, ceremonies and activities that are designed to strengthen the bonds between members. Jesus spoke of the church being the Body of Christ and how all of its parts need one another and how all of its parts serve one another.
On a purely psychological level the group activities of the church can provide structure and order in people’s lives, giving them a stability and purpose that they might not be able to achieve on their own. This, in of itself, without any spiritual dimension, can sometimes be enough to satisfy some people’s emotional needs. Spirituality simply adds another layer of meaning and emotional attachment, further strengthening this driver.
So, an ideal church community should share a great deal common. The same holy book, the same beliefs about it and the same beliefs about what it says. They break bread together, pray together, study the bible together, meet together at the church and at each other’s homes and they probably share similar political and social views. These activities promote great feelings of belonging and community in their members.
In real life such harmony is a rare thing. People being people there are disagreements, rivalries, factions, fallings out and discord. But even so I would still submit that members of church communities can experience strong feelings of belonging to a loving and caring community. Therefore, the personal need to belong can be deeply satisfied and this feeling can be a very powerful emotional driver, causing even highly intelligent people to overlook or discard their powers of critical thinking.
THE EMOTIONAL DRIVER OF THE NEED FOR SEEING JUSTICE DONE
This is probably the most contentious of the emotional drivers I will describe.
A cosmos without meaning is a cosmos where the wicked can go unpunished and the good can go unrewarded. A universe with no moral imperative imposed on it by supreme being is a universe where the law of the jungle reigns supreme. Where might equals right. A world without justice is a frightening and extremely unsettling thing for many religious people. They see injustices, crimes and evil deeds around them and little or nothing is done to rectify these things. They feel emotional pain because of this.
Once again, religion offers the answer. A proper moral reckoning will come at the end of time on Judgment Day. Justice will be served. Those who lived immoral lives will be punished and those who lived moral ones will be rewarded. This separation of the sheep and the goats is immensely comforting because, once again, it establishes order and meaning in an apparently lawless and justice-free world.
These notions are comforting on an emotional level to some people. Some look forward to the reckoning for genuinely good reasons because they really do want to see an end to suffering and the ultimate triumph of moral goodness over selfishness and evil.
But others do so for baser motives. Underneath their veneer of justice-seeking quite often lurks the darker desire to settle old scores. Eternal retribution for perceived wrongs by certain individuals or even entire social groups. The gays, the lesbians, the paedophiles, the socialists, the atheists, the Muslims, the pagans, etc., etc. They will all get what’s coming to them and certain Christians will be secretly (or openly) glad to see them all burn.
However, the take home message here is that all of this is down to emotion and none of it is down to reason, rationality or intelligence. So, if such emotions are harboured by highly intelligent people, their reasoning faculties can be swayed by these strong feelings.
The way I experienced this was less about being with all my church friends in the afterlife, than with the notion that “we are strangers in a strange land”, just passing through this earthly existence, looking forward to the perfect existence to come. In other words not only would I be with my friends and family, but there would be no more discord, conflict, duplicity, weakness, sin, etc. The afterlife doesn’t promise merely a continuation of earthly relationships, but the full realization of them.
What exactly this meant was never really stated; it was left up to the hopes, dreams, aspirations, needs, values and fantasies of the individual. One imagined friends that were magically never too busy for you, a spouse that had those annoying habits expunged, never being tired or irritable, never being unsure of anything, etc. I would imagine that an anxious person would imagine a life finally without anxiety, a disabled person imagined a life without disability, and so forth.
This is all silliness of the highest order, but it was what we were encouraged to “look forward to”. The idea was, I guess, that “sin” ruins everything, and in the allegedly sinless afterlife, everything is restored to a sort of Garden Of Eden-like paradise where no one lacks a clear role and full knowledge of how to fulfill it, and no one ever screws anything up.
There’s a verse (I Corinthians I think) that says “now we see through a glass darkly, but then [in heaven] we will see face to face”. It goes on to say that we will both known and fully be known. And this gets at what people really want: to be understood, appreciated, treasured, and cherished at all times and for it to be effortless and costless for them to reciprocate.
I’m going to revise what I said and describe only five emotional drivers rather than six. Having already tackled four, the last one will come tomorrow.
Your question about repetition is probably covered in the third one. The repetition of rituals, ceremonies and church activities ingrains strong feelings of belonging and these feelings (I would submit) can cause even highly intelligent people to accept things and believe things that their rational minds would reject.
I would further submit that Islam, with its strict adherence to rules and regulations and its repeated daily communal activities is, if anything, even stronger than Christianity in forming strong emotional drivers. Ones that can readily overwhelm the critical thinking and reasoning of intelligent people.
Perhaps Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman being a good example?
Oh and btw, please don’t wait for me to finish my descriptions of these emotional drivers. Just jump right in if you want to.
Just so. Ritual’s main practical real world purpose is to focus one’s mind on things that the faith considers important, but it has the important side effect of providing structure and guidance. In the extreme, for a certain personality type, it also does the heavy lifting of dealing with weighty moral questions by simply removing them from consideration: one performs the prescribed oblations, behaves correctly, etc., and that is the answer to everything.
Yes, and ironically, as we see in the US today with the temporary dominance of Christian nationalism, God’s supposed justice isn’t an end to the law of the jungle, it is simply the imposition of one group’s beliefs and rules on everyone, even (and especially) those outside the in-group. It is justice for me, but not for thee. It is my way or the highway (to hell).
Almost as amazing to me as the immorality and depravity of Christian nationalists is the complete impotence of Christians of a gentler mindset in the face of this. I don’t see liberal Christianity crusading against this perfidy and in favor of truth, love, gentleness, kindness, humility or healing. Maybe they do so privately just by maintaining such emphases in their own teachings, but there’s no corrective or “prophetic” aspect to it, no moral stance that would remotely prick a fundamentalist’s conscience. No significant effective counterbalance to the far right / authoritarian wing of the faith at all, so far as I can see.
Curiously enough Mordant your comments remind of a tv documentary about Queen Elizabeth the First of England and her first cousin, once removed, Mary Queen of Scots.
The former was a moderate Protestant and the latter a devout Catholic. The documentary drew an interesting comparison between the practice of their faiths.
For Mary her Catholicism consisted mostly of performing the necessary rituals and ceremonies in correct ways, leaving all important judgment on religious and spiritual matters to the Papal Father in Rome. That and behaving according to the precepts and tenets set out by the Catholic church.
For Elizabeth her faith was largely a matter of her personal relationship with God, with her conscience and her rational mind grappling with matters of doctrine, ethics and theology. She was guided by men of the Church on difficult issues, but their role was advisory - not prescriptive.
Quite a difference.
But I do agree with your point that certain personality types need to be told what is good and right rather than to discover for themselves what is good and right.
THE EMOTIONAL DRIVER OF THE NEED FOR PERSONAL PURIFICATION
In the eyes of Bible-based Christianity all humans are fallen, sinful and naturally wicked beings deserving only eternal punishment in the fires of Hell. But this view can be a two-edged sword, cutting deeply into the private lives of believers for good, but also for ill.
As far as Christianity goes, the good aspect begins when a sinner is brought to the foot of the cross, confesses themselves in need of redemption and puts their life into the hands of Jesus. They are then born again of the holy spirit, purified in the eyes of God and they become adopted Sons of God with a future inheritance in heaven.
The negative aspect manifests itself in thoughts and feelings of guilt and shame when a Christian dwells on the sins they commit on a daily basis. Even though they may intellectually know and realise that they will become pure in heaven, they still feel defiled and unworthy NOW. Strong feelings of self-loathing and self-disgust can sometimes be bubbling away just under their apparently serene surface.
These feelings are often exacerbated by sermons from their pastor on the subject of sin, from reading or listening to Bible commentaries about sin or from simply talking to other Christians about sin. This is a terrible position to be in because there is literally no way out of it. God knows all and sees all. Nor can you even think about suicide as a way of ending the pain and being at peace. Your life was given to you by God and it is his, not yours. So, you will find no peace that way. Only eternal suffering in the never-ending fire.
For some Christians, living like this can be excruciating. As in the Latin Excruciare, which means to inflict severe torture or torment. The word itself deriving ultimately from Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross – perhaps the most severe torment of all.
I have seen the awful testimonies of Christians who suffered with scrupulosity issues, OCD’s, depression, anxiety and panic attacks, all down the pressure they felt from their church, their peers and most of all from God, to stop being the wicked and sinful people they know that they really are. Help for people suffering like this can be found here.
It can be quite difficult or even impossible for anyone not from such a background or upbringing to understand the mental and emotional anguish that can rack the minds and hearts of Christians. But this is real and it does happen. All too often.
On the back of this description, I therefore submit that such self-loathing and the desperate need for personal purification can be such strong emotional drivers that they can overwhelm the rational thinking of highly intelligent people. Once again, causing them to believe in and accept things that are irrational, unreasonable and illogical.